Paste: Your mother died 30 years ago, you’ve said. They’re not about soil erosion, or farming in Kenya, you know?” On the eve of London Suede’s 2022 comeback, Anderson sat still long enough to discuss the implications of still being a popular-and vital-rock icon in his mid-50s. Great songs are about simple things- they’re about loss, they’re about regret, they’re about love, they’re about fame. So it’s very rare for songwriters to tackle big subjects and really do them justice- very rare. But what I am an expert on, and what I feel I’m on safe lyrical ground with, are my personal relationships and the way I feel as a human being, and that’s the essence of songwriting, I think. “The microscopic is more interesting to me than the macroscopic, so for me to project my opinions onto people would be very naive, and a bit sixth form. “No, I leave that to people who are more qualified,” Anderson explains.

This album took three years to write, and it’s so misleading that way, because it’s so live-sounding and fresh-sounding, people might mistakenly assume that we banged it out and wrote it quickly because of the sense of urgency that the record has.” Purposely, the lyricist steers clear of anything overtly political throughout Autofiction, no matter how inviting a topical target like exiting English prime minister Boris Johnson might be. “But it took quite a lot of work to sound this enthusiastic.

“I’m very proud of this record,” the singer says. But looks can be deceiving, Anderson counters. The album feels like it simply exploded out of one single dusk-to-dawn session, like a vintage Richard Gottehrer “Instant” Ramones record.

Underscored by the meaty, Will Sergeant-conversive axe work of guitarist Richard Oakes, who replaced departing founder Bernard Butler in 1994, songs like “Black Ice,” “Shadow Self,” “15 Again” and a sinister Gothic creeper ominously dubbed “It’s Always the Quiet Ones,” the disc is riveting, right through to the bass-heavy closing stomper, “Turn Off Your Brain and Yell.” From the opening anthem “She Still Leads Me On,” an uplifting, almost tear-jerking ode to his late mother, Anderson is yelp-bellowing with the same Grand Guignol bravura he displayed way back in 1993 on Suede’s dramatic Britpop-era debut, the Mercury Prize-winning Suede. But remarkably, the still-whip-thin vocalist is absolutely on rejuvenated fire on Autofiction, the group’s majestic new album, its eighth. After three decades in show business fronting British glam-punk combo Suede, or The London Suede, as they’ve been contractually re-christened in the States, Brett Anderson could easily have fallen prey to cynicism, meh-shrugging melancholia or complete loss of any novel sense of inspiration whatsoever.

Tom anderson guitars